IBM OEMs Actifio to create virtual data pipelines

IBM is OEM’ing Actifio’s Virtual Data Pipeline technology to supply production data copies to downstream users for faster application development and analytics.

IBM has confirmed the agreement with us and is working up the details for a big announcement before IBM THINK in February. The deal should strengthen Actifio’s ability to compete with other data virtualisers and managers such as Delphix and Cohesity. A Big Blue badge of approval should also improve Actifio’s sales prospects with enterprises beyond the IBM channel.

Actifio’s Virtual Data Pipeline (VDP) captures data in its native format from production application sources such as Oracle, SAP, SQL Server and Exchange, in physical or virtual environments, on-premises or in the cloud.

A single master copy of each data source is maintained with post-initial capture changes tracked at the block level and incrementally merged into the master copies.

Actifio Virtual Data Pipeline concept

Users can apply masking to master copy data to filter sensitive data. The results are delivered for testing in software development, analytics, data protection, long-term storage in the cloud, and governance.

Policies can be set to define data workflows and data-using functions can request fresh data copies via a REST API or clicking in a UI.

IBM confirmed the OEM deal though PR spokesperson Lucy Linthwaite: “We launched a new offering in December 2018 called InfoSphere Virtual Data Pipeline, which is based on the Actifio Sky virtual appliance. … This is a traditional OEM agreement with Actifio.”

Brian Reagan, Actifio CMO, said more details on Actifio’s alliance with IBM are on their way and talked about expanding Actifio’s market reach through more than 4,000 IBM sales reps.

Actifio started in 2009 as a copy data management company. Its software makes a golden master copy of production data and pumps out fast virtual copies to non-production users that need it. This can save days and sometimes weeks of development time, the company says .

It now refers to itself as a multi-cloud data management services company, and picked up $100m in E-round funding in August 2018.